How to run 2 additional HDD's and 1 CDRW drive in Compaq SR5113WM PC?

How to run 2 additional HDD's and 1 CDRW drive in Compaq SR5113WM PC?

PC: Compaq Presario SR5113WM (yeah, Wal-Mart), Vista Home Basic
Motherboard: Asus M2N68-LA
OEM Primary Hard Drive: Hitcachi 160GB 7200 SATA
OEM Primary Disc Drive: Lightscribe DVDRW SATA

Physical room in the box: 2 additional HDD spaces, 1 additional disc drive space, power supply cables for at least 2 additional full-size storage devices, one open socket for an IDE ribbon.

I cannot seem to figure out how to successfully run 2 additional IDE devices in this new machine! First, the main BIOS screen only lists 4 total spots for storage devices, and device 0 is never occupied (is that only reserved for floppy??. And soforth does that only leave room for 1 additional storage device, not 2??)

When I tried hooking up 2 additional EIDE hard drives (cable select) to the IDE ribbon then to the board, the computer would not boot first try. On second try, I went into the BIOS and it still didn't list a device #0, and listed a "garbage" name for the #1 drive (at the end of the IDE ribbon), then listed the supplied SATA HDD in the #2 spot, and the SATA DVD in #3. Upon exit of the BIOS, it warned me that the drive at the end of the IDE cable was in danger of failure?? The drive in the slave spot on the IDE cable wasn't recognized at all, but when reattached alone at the end of the IDE cable (no drive in the slave spot), it worked perfectly and was also recognized by Windows.


My spare hard drives (all have data on them)
WD Caviar 160GB 7200 RPM (success alone at end of the IDE cable, not recognized in slave spot with other drives at end of cable)
WD 60 GB (failure at end of IDE cable with 160GB in the slave spot)
Maxtor 120 GB (failure at end of IDE cable with 160GB drive in the slave spot)
WD 40 GB (not added yet)

Am I exceeding the capabilities of the existing hardware or BIOS by attempting to run more than 1 IDE device?

Are the drives that received "garbage" names by the BIOS now corrupted?

 

From my experience when the HDD has a garbaled name it is going bad or not recognized by BIOS. Make sure you have them set (jumpered) correctly.. master with a slave. Some drives have Master, Master w/ Sllave, Slave, or Cable Select.. and are quite finnicky about how they are jumpered.

Or just buy a PCI ATA card and add them. They may be a bit hard to find now days everything is PATA Raid, but they are still around nad give you 2 controllers so you can have 4 drives.

 

I think I have a PCI ATA card somewhere, but the computer only came with 2 PCI slots which are taken up by my wireless network card and my sound card.